The high street is the heart of many British towns and cities, traditionally where people can find their everyday needs, such as retail stores, cafes and restaurants, banks, groceries, and other local businesses. With Princes Street, Oxford Street, and Piccadilly Circus, the United Kingdom has some of the
. However, the central role of high streets has been diminishing, with a 2023 survey finding that the high street does not fulfill many consumers' needs and almost one third of consumers said their
.
Declining popularity
One of the biggest changes associated with the retail industry in recent years has been the rapid growth in e-commerce sales, which account for more than
one quarter of the country’s total retail sales. When asked to compare high streets, shopping centers, and online, the latter was seen to have the
largest variety of goods and cheapest options. On the
high street, yearly like-for-like sales actually increased at the beginning of 2023, but trailed off over the course of the year, and sales were 2.7 percent lower in December 2023 than the same month in the previous year.
Store closures
A symptom of declining sales and footfall has been the increasing number of store closures across the country. Within the past decade, a number of well-known high street businesses closed shop, such as Wilko, Cath Kidson, and Debenhams. 2023 saw a record
number of failing medium and large retail companies, at 61. From 2015 to 2022, the
net closures of chain retailers in Great Britain was in the thousands, meaning many more stores closed than opened. Net closures were especially high in 2021.
Consumer opinions
The impact of these closures was not lost on consumers, of the 32 percent who said their local high street was getting worse, the
leading reasons by a distance were empty shops and a smaller variety of shops. This was not a universal experience, as almost one quarter of respondents said that their local high street was improving, while the most popular response was actually that their local high street is neither improving nor getting worse. Those who were more
positive about their local area said that there had been an increase in the variety of shops, the area had become cleaner, and that there were more cafes, restaurants, bars, and pubs.
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